Kremlin-Backed Media Outlets Face Growing Global Crackdown

Technology platforms including

Alphabet Inc.’s

GOOG -0.54%

YouTube, Facebook parent

Meta Platforms Inc.,

TikTok have moved to restrict access to the news outlet in Europe, following requests from the EU and European governments. Meta said Tuesday that it was beginning to demote RT world-wide and make viewing across its platforms more difficult.

Streaming distributor

Roku Inc.

ROKU -2.09%

said Tuesday the company was removing RT from its channel store globally.

The European Union announced a fuller expression of its sanctions against RT and fellow Kremlin-backed outlet Sputnik on Tuesday, saying the restrictions applied to all cable, satellite and web services. “We all stand for freedom of speech, but it cannot be abused to spread war propaganda,” said

Věra Jourová,

a vice president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm.

So far, the U.S. government hasn’t publicly issued any orders for companies to take action against Russian outlets.

Representatives for RT and Sputnik didn’t respond to requests for comment. RT has denied working on behalf of the Kremlin and has defended the accuracy of its broadcasts.

Recent RT broadcasts have referred to invaded Ukrainian cities as “liberated,” alleged a “genocide” against ethnic Russians in separatist regions of eastern Ukraine and focused on how EU sanctions against Russia would hurt the EU.

“They are pumping straight disinformation,” said

Clint Watts,

a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Alliance for Securing Democracy. He pointed to reports such as a recent documentary alleging that Russians found mass graves in Ukraine as part of a broader narrative justifying the invasion.

RT’s presence on the American media landscape has been particularly controversial since a 2017 U.S. intelligence report dubbed it the Kremlin’s “principal international propaganda outlet.” The report concluded that RT had been a central player in Russia’s efforts to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

U.S. pay-TV providers said at the time that they weren’t able to drop RT’s TV channel because of a U.S. law that allowed broadcasters to demand carriage in lieu of being paid for their content. RT also paid distributors to be carried, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

In 2017, Congress passed legislation that allowed cable-TV operators to decline carriage of programming owned, controlled or financed by the Russian government.

Subsequently, operators such as

Comcast Corp.

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and

Charter Communications Inc.

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stopped carrying RT, in many cases opting not to renew their contracts.

Other companies including DirecTV and rival

Dish Network Corp.

DISH -2.22%

continued to carry RT.

While DirecTV dropped RT Tuesday, Dish and its streaming-TV service Sling still carried the network. Dish executives have been discussing whether to drop RT, a person familiar with the matter said.

“Our thoughts are with all the people of Ukraine, and particularly with our team members in the country. We are closely monitoring the situation,” a spokeswoman for Dish said in a written statement on Monday.

The National Association of Broadcasters, the trade group for the U.S. television and radio industries, on Tuesday called on local stations to stop carrying any state-sponsored programming with ties to the Russian government.

Regional cable-TV and internet provider Buckeye Broadband, which serves parts of Ohio and Michigan, one of the few remaining distributors of RT, said it didn’t plan to drop the network.

“We believe our responsibility is to present avenues of information and not to edit our customers’ access. Our carriage of the RT network is not an endorsement of the Russian government nor of its actions,” said

Geoffrey Shook,

president and general manager of Buckeye. He said Buckeye doesn’t pay RT for access nor receive any compensation for it.

Traditional television is just one way RT and other Russia-backed media outlets have reached American audiences. The U.S. intelligence report noted that RT had been particularly successful on YouTube. On Saturday, YouTube announced that it was pausing the ability for RT and other Russian-backed news outlets to make money from their content via advertising. Meta made a similar move.

In the U.S., RT’s YouTube channel continued to serve live feeds on Tuesday, as did Facebook.

Facebook spokesman

Andy Stone

pointed to steps already taken to reduce access to RT and Sputnik content and plans to label Facebook Pages, Instagram accounts of Russian state media entities and posts with links to them.

A YouTube spokeswoman likewise pointed to the actions the service has taken against RT but had no comment on the availability of RT’s live feeds in the U.S.

Up to now, the big tech platforms generally focused on labeling RT’s content, not blocking it. YouTube began adding labels to state-run media, including RT, in 2018, and Facebook made a similar move in 2020.

Twitter

started labeling RT and other state-run media in August of 2020 and said it stopped including their content on various recommendations systems, effectively making it harder to find.

Twitter said Monday that it would label even more cases of content from state-sponsored outlets like RT and further reduce their distribution. A Twitter spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the company would take further action against RT.

RT had also found a large U.S. audience in recent years through the unwitting help of some of America’s most prominent conservative websites, including RealClearPolitics, Daily Caller and Newsmax. Those websites joined a distribution network called Mixi.Media that allowed other members’ content to be displayed on their home pages. After the Journal reported on this phenomenon—which several of the members said they weren’t aware of—in 2020, Mixi removed RT from its network, according to Mixi’s owner,

Alex Baron.

RT.com’s web presence has declined somewhat in recent years, dropping from 163 million visits world-wide in January 2019 to 132 million in January 2022 and from 12.3 million visits to 11.5 million in the U.S., according to SimilarWeb, an internet analytics firm.

—Meghan Bobrowsky contributed to this article.

Write to Keach Hagey at [email protected] and Lillian Rizzo at [email protected]